About

Work Experience

• Head of Software, Agtonomy

  Feb, 2021 - Present

  Physicalfarm agents that automate the complete growing lifecycle from continuous data collection, predictive analytics and automated physical labor actions in agriculture and land maintenance. The farm of the future starts with highly intelligent machines.

  • Technical architect and product lead for 6 generations of autonomous tractors, including both BEV and diesel drivetrains

  • Led autonomy, systems engineering and currently software engineering teams from inception

  • Supported fundraising rounds through Seed (13M) and Series A (32M)

  • Previously, Head of Autonomy, Feb 2021 - March 2024

• Systems & Robotics Lead, Postmates (acquired by Uber)

  Apr, 2018 - Jan, 20212 years 10 months

  Last mile logistics delivery robots for urban and suburban markets.

  • Led systems engineering, cross-functional architecture and product design of a novel mobile robotic platform for last mile logistics deliveries on sidewalks in urban and suburban markets.

  • Senior manager of a team of 4 interdisciplinary engineers focused on lidar-inertial odometry, localization, mapping, behavioral autonomy, sensor fusion, collision avoidance and systems engineering.

  • Product and project lead for teleoperation and autonomy subsystems design, implementation and operational deployments.

  • Software IC for various drive by wire, dev ops, autonomy and diagnostics subsystems.

  • Awarded several patents for design and development of Serve.

• Principal Engineer, area17

  Feb, 2016 - Feb, 20182 years

  Indoor navigation and autonomy solutions for robotics and mapping

  • Developed and executed technology roadmap to transition research-based SRI hardware and software into product MVPs

  • Designed, manufactured and integrated first several robotic hardware products

  • Designed and implemented onboard application communication layer utilizing off-the-shelf technologies

  • Designed and implemented real-time path planning, control and behavioral autonomy software layers for aerial and ground robotic vehicles

  • Implemented sensor/actuator drivers for common hardware interfaces

  • Designed and implemented web-based front end for real-time communication with hardware

  • Developed end-to-end SITL robotic simulation tools

  • Systems architecture for next generation vehicles and vehicle capabilities

  • Requirements, sprint planning, customer contracts and other various systems engineering/PM responsibilities for a team of 6

  • Technical contributions to VC meetings/fundraising resulting in successful $2M seed round

• Control Systems Engineer, PRENAV

  Feb, 2015 - Jan, 201611 months

  Robotic systems architecture and design, GNC/autopilot development including fault- tolerant control methods & autonomous operation, and real-time planning of multi-rotor UAV platforms for autonomous infrastructure inspection. Efforts focus on localization via a strategic combination of inertial, laser and vision sensors and nonlinear control strategies to achieve centimeter accurate navigation in GNS-denied environments using both custom flight software and a customized PX4 stack. Additional contributions in execution autonomy, failure state detection and robustness, mechanical design, systems-level integration, vehicle design, and cross-functional project management.

• Engineering Consultant, AeroCine

  Nov, 2014 - Jun, 20157 months

  Systems architecture, control design and implementation of a fully-stabilized 3-axis camera gimbal and heavy-lift 8-rotor UAV used in the commercial film industry. Accomplishments include gimbal electrical/control architecture and establishing vehicle system-level design including component/material selection, control architecture, path planning, system autonomy and health monitoring. The UAV / gimbal system was the first to carry an autonomously stabilized ARRI Alexa camera.

• Senior R&D Engineer, Sols Systems

  Jun, 2014 - Dec, 20146 months

  Developed fully automated parametric solid model generation of 3d printed custom orthotics using python-based geometry libraries, scaled server design and integration, and web-based server api tools (flask, redis, celery). Algorithm-based design practices for scalable custom manufacturing, FEA / structural analysis/experimentation of 3d-printed materials, mechanism design and fabrication of apparatus for testing material stress and fatigue of 3d printed materials, contributions to computer vision applications using homography-based reconstruction.

• Systems Engineer, Bluefin Robotics

  Dec, 2012 - Jun, 20141 year 6 months

  Lead control systems engineer, developed dynamic system models for simulation studies
  for Bluefin autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), developed and implemented control system architecture for several classes of underwater vehicles, sensor selection and algorithm design for GPS/DVL-based INS, completed in-water control acceptance testing and validation, assisted with autonomy / path planning capabilities, provided computational fluid dynamics analysis for hydrodynamic recommendations to mechanical and systems-level design decisions, was the technical lead for pipeline tracking system integration (requirements, scheduling, cost, interface documentation, traceability) and technical lead systems engineer for business development proposals (including federal government bidding) for unmanned surface vehicles (USV) and other robotic marine platforms.

• PhD Research Assistant, University of Florida

  May, 2006 - Dec, 20126 years 7 months

  Developed Lyapunov-based control techniques for a wide range of nonlinear systems. Research efforts combined adaptive techniques with robust methods to compensate for system uncertainties and unmodeled disturbances. Research focused on time-delayed nonlinear systems and systems with actuation saturation constraints as well as algorithms for monocular camera systems which provide real-time pose and velocity estimation for use in navigation and control.

  • Uncertain Euler-Lagrange systems with time-delays (state and/or input delays)

  • Continuous saturated control designs

  • Differential inclusions and control design utilizing nonsmooth analysis

  • Controllers for autonomous underwater vehicles, PUMA robotic manipulators, quad-rotor UAVs

  • Terminal guidance for UAV aerial refueling

  • Position and velocity estimation for real-time autonomous ground vehicle convoys

  • Geolocation using a handheld video feeds

  • Contactless mass estimation of livestock using stereo-vision camera

  • Speed estimation of highway vehicles from stationary cameras

  • Developed/implemented control architecture for custom designed AUV

  • Developed robust pose & vision-based control methods for fully-actuated underwater vehicles

  • Mechanical design and fabrication (pressure vessels, structural design, electronic packaging, wet cabling, corrosion prevention)

  • Systems integration, test scheduling, project management

  • State machine/mission behaviors and artificial intelligence for path planning

  • Sensor fusion and state estimation

• Mechanical Engineering Intern, Honeywell

  May, 2006 - Aug, 20063 months

  Worked with a mechanical engineering team to design and maintain guidance and navigation applications for military vehicles. Investigated design changes for failures in hermetically sealed guidance housings. Researched material choices for electronic packaging in hostile environments. Provided insight to design choices for F-35 guidance package. Completed thermal, force, stress, vibration, material, and tolerance analysis and calculation for multiple guidance packaging solutions for flight and aerospace vehicle contracts.

• Information Technology Intern, Raymond James Financial Inc.

  May, 2003 - Aug, 20052 years 3 months

  Assisted clients with general information technology support. Walked clients through VPN installation and use. Provided general Microsoft Windows troubleshooting via phone and remote management support. Designed/Programmed/Installed custom workspaces for broker stock trading software throughout company.

Education

Awards

Publications